Scientific Discipline 2

An approach of scientific discipline for the spiritualism of humanity. 

Life is a play of attraction of opposites. Yin attracts Yang and vice-versa. This rule is the way of nature, of biology. Even spiritualism is not unaffected by this rule, although it is a different journey altogether. Spiritualism is a pilgrimage to self-nature, to being oneself. We don’t have to seek through spiritualism that which attracts us, that which is our opposite. On the contrary, we seek that which we are; we seek our own pristine nature, our original face. But ordinarily our life is a search for the opposites. In youth everyone is so active, and as we grow old all activity begins to ebb. Why? Just for the reason that the youth is packed with masculine and feminine energy, so young men and women become busy building boats and preparing for adventures. With the advent of old age, the fire of life dims considerably. By this time men and women come to know all about each other, and so the pull of opposites withers away. Too much familiarity breeds indifference. As it is the natural law of life that the opposite attracts, so it is the natural law of spiritualism that self-nature attracts, not the opposite. Because of this, we find ourselves in trouble when we apply the ordinary law of the world to spiritual discipline. 

As I see, both biology and spiritualism have their own laws. And a right kind of culture, a complete culture can come into being only if both are allowed to grow in their own ways. In spiritualism, if allowed to grow on the basis of its natural laws- if seekers choose their disciplines rightly, in accord with their types- will lead to explosive action in the field of religion. Krishna is in full accord with his own type, he does not deviate from his self-nature. So are Buddha and Mahavira too. For this reason Krishna’s life is crammed with particular style. Not that Buddha lacks in action. Mahavira keeps moving from one village to another for full forty years in life. It is true that he does not take part in war, he engages in higher kind of war waged in different level. Buddha does not play a flute but his discourses resound with a note that is higher than that of a flute. He has found his authentic being at its highest. Krishna has discovered his own sublime reality, his truth, and he is complete and contented.    

How to find our own distinctive type? It is difficult but not impossible to find. One way is to remember this simple maxim yet difficult to put in practice- that which attracts us is not our type. It is the opposite of our own nature, because the opposite attracts. It seems paradoxical and difficult too, to understand that what repels us is our type. We are not what attract us, we are its opposite. We are really that which repels us! It is really arduous to figure out this paradox, but life is paradoxical. Contemplate the discussion and we shall go in deeper! 

Wishing you good health & happiness,

Dr. Dwarakanath, Director, Mitran foundation- the stress management people 

What is the Difference?

What is the Difference?  1980s was the decade of my spiritual search and contemplation. During this period, I read a number of good books, came across a number of good organisations and met a number of good persons. One such occasion was visiting the Sadhu Vaswani Mission at Pune and meeting its head Dada J P Vaswani. It was in the mid-eighties and I was still learning to interact with holy persons in a meaningful manner. The first interaction obviously used to be in the form of a greeting and in case of holy persons, it was quite customary to touch their feet. When I was to meet Dr Vaswani, I went with the same frame of mind and touched his feet when I met him. By look and body language, Dada looked very humble but I was taken aback when in response to touching his feet, he touched my feet. I was quite embarrassed at this action of his, but then he explained its significance to me. He said that as children of God or as part of the same supreme soul, what was the difference between him and me. As a result, we all need to salute each other with equal reverence. This was exactly the reason why he touched the feet of those who touched his feet. While the explanation may look simple, it was not easy to comprehend its depth at that point of time. Even if one could comprehend it, to practice the same is very difficult. 

I quite often contemplate on this incident and the more I do, the more reverence I develop for Dadaji. It also helps me in reducing the sense of duality in me, which is the cause of all our troubles. We have become so used to plurality that we either suffer with a sense of superiority or inferiority. As a result, the joy of living gets lost and we become part of a rat race to overtake others. This creates further aberrations in our living and the whole life is lost without marching towards its true goal. 

The message of this small incident is very great. All of us need to know our true identity and if we succeed in doing so, all hierarchies in our mind will disappear. We shall then see no hierarchy in the creations of God and will duly see the beautiful variety in them. The negative tendencies like superiority, inferiority, jealousy, hatred, anger, etc., will gradually disappear and we will be able to live a life of perfect joy heading towards its true goal.

Rakesh Mittal I A S

For Sale

Many of the Indian Thoughts readers have pointed out that my passion is always for the young. It is true; today, especially in India, it is the youth who is most strangled, due to mostly compulsive religious practises, polluted social outlook and corrupt administration. They are the people who need much care. They are the would be  kings and queens of tomorrow. Recently, I came across a review on Indians outside India, which concludes saying that Indians are no way inefficient and they strive better outside India. Is the present Indian system so venomous that it does not allow anybody to grow beyond seven feet? Rono Dutta once president of Sahara Airlines later became the head of United Airlines, the biggest airline in the world. Vikram Pundit, an Indian born American once was the Chief executive of Citibank, one of the largest banks in the world. In 1998, Rana Talwar was group executive of Standard Chartered Bank, one of the biggest multinational banks in Britain. Lakhsmi Mittal of Indian descent is the chairman and CEO of Arcelor Mittal, the world’s largest steel making company. Subhash Chandra of Zee TV is a global media king Gururaj Deshpande’s Sycamore based communications company is currently valued by the US stock market at over $ 30 billion, making him perhaps one of the richest Indians in the world. Arun Netravali has become president of Bell Labs, one of the biggest research and development centres in the world with 30,000 inventions and several Nobel Prizes to its credit. The list continues through Indra Krishnamurthy Nooyi, Saber Bhatia, Shailesh Mehta, Rakesh Gangwal ….. However, this statement is not wholly true because there are hundreds of Indians like Rattan Tata, Narayana Murthy and Kris Gopalakrishnan of Infosys, Ambanys, Adi Godrej, Savitri Jindal etc. who could soar to heights.

To identify the main problem factor here, if there is one, I should say that it is just our attitude on ourselves. The word sale literally refers to transfer of a product in exchange for money, an equivalent service or a thing. But a ‘Sale’ board in a store means that the product is available at a discount price. Today, it is a sad thing to note that Indian youth have chosen to be a material open for sale. Ask someone, ‘What are you?’ The answer could be something that means that they are working for or they belong to somebody or something. Occasionally you might hear isolated meek voices saying that I’m a software engineer, I’m a farmer, I’m a sales expert, I’m an artist etc. What difference it makes? In the first case you say that you are sold to a particular company or concern; in the latter situation you say that you are what you are. I say that the Indian shackles are not the issue but putting ourselves on sale is. We first make sure our worth in currency and fix the deal, where both the individual and his shadow are sold. Today’s worst scenario is that the nation is filled with energetic youngsters with a tag on their necks, ‘For Sale’.

Joseph Mattappally

Deepening in Empathy

It is difficult to define empathy accurately. Yet it is generally understood as placing oneself in another person’s emotional and cognitive framework: the capacity to recognize emotions and thoughts as experienced by another; discerning what another person is thinking or feeling. There is affective and cognitive empathy depending on one’s capacity to respond with an appropriate emotion or to understand another’s perspective. Empathy is different from sympathy. I have written about empathy; I have trained counselors and psychotherapists in empathy. Yet after many years of practicing empathy, I feel I still need to deepen in empathy. The case in point is an intense sharing and analysis in a group setting. I thought I was helpful in analyzing certain words such as “strange”, “abnormal” used by someone, who is emotionally very close to me, to describe a certain statement not well thought out by another person in the group who had difficulty identifying feelings and thoughts, and expressing them assertively. Incidentally the person’s “light-hearted” -  “silly” as later labeled by the one who made it - statement related to rescuing a cat before me in a dangerous situation. My effort in clarifying interactions among persons by suggesting to describe the emotional impact that words and statements could have on persons, and to stay away from general “loaded” and “categorizing” words really back-fired on me. I must also say my sequencing of analysis of sympathies, whether affective or cognitive, or affective or cognitive disconnect could have save the day or at least avoided some unnecessary hurts. That all in the group were good-intentioned, loving, and caring did not help the matter any. Now that I have, perhaps, complicated the matter sufficiently for the reader, let me see what lessons we can learn from this encounter group.

Any group experience can teach us valuable lessons. There will always be obvious risks, pains, and hurts that we will have to pay as the price or fee for growing. Certain hurts can be avoided by careful interventions and skillful maneuverings. What I learnt from the above group experience was that I could still go deeper in empathy. I started writing a letter parsing words and justifying my intervention to my friend and colleague who is deeply concerned about my emotional welfare, and who was very hurt by my intervention. Soon I became aware or rather broke into an insight that I needed to discard my earlier letter and write a new letter from my friend’s cognitive and affective perspective in order to heal the hurts that he felt. This letter worked marvelously to repair the damage. Because all that mattered was love, and there was plenty of love to go around in the midst of hurts. I am reminded of St. Paul’s words: “Love covers a multitude of sins”. Love goes beyond words. Personally, I am examining all my close relationships that require greater clarity in deeper empathy. It is not that I know and love them that matters. What really matters is that they know that I understand and love them. This deep love and understanding can happen only in deep empathy.

Swami (Dr)  Snehananda Jyoti

Youngest Prince

Being the youngest one in my family, I always connected well with the bedtime story of the youngest prince who could always kill the parrot in which the devil's soul used to lie. He brought back to life his elder brothers who had become stone statues in the great grand fortress of the devil. He also returned with the sweet princess of another friendly kingdom who was also under the pangs of the same devil. Then he marries the princess. Even though he is the youngest one, he gets the kingdom and then he rules for a long time and lives happily ever after.

This bedtime tale must be having some motive. Probably it is told to fill positivity in a young child, that even though you are so small, you can still be the ultimate winner. In real life too we often see young hard working people overtaking the wits of their adult counterparts and do things that elders never thought they will be able to. 

I and my wife used to go to a sub-urban shop in my locality and the moment we used to see the father sitting on the counter, we used to return back. The reason was that the behaviour of the father was quite rude, while his son was just opposite. Whenever his son used to be there, we always enjoyed buying goods from that shop. 

Age of a person is not a parameter to expect good behaviour from a person. It is not even a precondition to do heroics like killing the devil. Many times experienced people err in their behavioral skills. Positivity, courage, truthfulness are not age related and can easily be acquired at young age itself. 

Dr. Sunil Ji Garg

Determination

If you can take it, you can make it. If you can take unjust criticism and insults without losing your temper, you can make it. If you can make sacrifice and self-denial without complaining, you can make it. “There is one virtue, “wrote George Sand, “the eternal sacrifice of self.” If you can take self-discipline without getting discouraged, you can make it. Ponder these words of William Penn: “No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown,” If you can take reverses, adversity and disappointments without giving up, you can make it. 

Pat Seed, a woman in her fifties, was told a few years ago that she had cancer and only six months to live. Instead of resigning herself to her situation, she immediately embarked on a fund-raising campaign to buy for the Christie Hospital Manchester a sophisticated scanner for the early detection of cancer. She worked so hard at this that she scarcely had time to think about anything else, including her own terminal illness. She not only outlived her six months; today, six years later, she has raised more than three million pounds for the life-saving equipment. She has been presented with an MBE by the Queen at Buckingham Palace, and she has been declared entirely free from cancer. Moreover, over 5000 patients have now been scanned by the equipment bought through her fund-raising, and probably many lives saved. She reacted positively to her situation she was able to change it radically. 

All big personalities are dreamers. They see things in the soft of  a  spring day or in the red fire of a long winter’s evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others like Pat Seed  nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.

Whatever the mind can conceive, dream and determine, it can achieve. 

Scientific Discipline

An approach of scientific discipline for the spiritualism of humanity. 

Krishna in Gita explains about two types of Karma Yoga. One is action without attachment, and another is inaction with a sense of involvement in action. These are the two ways of sannyas and action, and it depends on us, which way we choose for ourselves. Someone can choose doing and yet remain a non-doer, and another can opt for non-doing and yet remain a doer. These are two types of people in the world, and we have to know our own type. This area of analysis needs more clear observation than any, because this makes the basic approach of the scientific discipline for spiritualism. I would like to explain it in a gross way so we can reach the subtlety of the concept. As I see it, a male mind will choose doing and yet remain a non-doer. A female mind will choose non-doing and yet remain a doer. There is the basic difference between two minds- male and female minds. Please don’t mistake it for sex of a person, it is the mind and it is just for our understanding the metaphor is used. While the male mind is active, the feminine mind is passive. If the female has to do something it will do it as if it is not doing. And to contrary a male, even when is inactive, seems to be active and aggressive. 

These are two broad divisions of mind- the male mind and the female mind. It is called broad division because not all men are aggressive nor all women passive. Female mind when in love, does not express the love directly. A male mind on the other hand, will show off the love even in doubt of real love. Remember, I am not talking about a man or woman. I am talking about the male mind and female mind. As for as sannyas is concerned it is one and indivisible, but we can approach it in two ways. But approaching it in different ways should be done with very high awareness or we can get carried away into cycle of Karma. 

If a person of feminine mind- who can be a doer without doing- becomes a sannyasin, he will turn sannyas into inaction. But if a male mind takes sannyas, then action will be his way, and he will/ should know in his depth that he is not a doer, action just happens. The problem happens in two ways, one is the wrong choice and the other is not able to dissociate from the fruits. In male mind, it is the idea of being a doer. If the doer disappears, leaving action free and on its own, then there is no end to its dynamism. The great amount of energy that was spent in being a doer will now be exclusively available to action, making it dynamic and total. Again, if the detachment is total it will work or else it can take us to another ego roller coaster ride, which seems to be the truth in most of us. 

Similarly if a person with feminine mind, if fully accepts his or her inaction, then this inaction will generate in its own way such immense action that we cannot even imagine. Because then his or her whole energy will be together and total. And this summation of energy is explosive. But most of us err on this score. We often choose the opposite or we are attached. And it is not without reasons! 

Wishing you good health and happiness,

Dr. Dwarakanath, Mitran foundation- the stress management people